


Shhhh!

by Dragonflies_and_Katydids



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Meetings, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-15 09:03:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16930347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonflies_and_Katydids/pseuds/Dragonflies_and_Katydids
Summary: Football players have invaded Dorian's library. He's going to make them leave, just as soon as he finishes watching the cute blond one.(An old prompt fill from Tumblr, based on a list of potential library AUs.)





	Shhhh!

There are football players in his library.

All right, technically it’s the college’s library rather than Dorian’s, and--also technically--said football players are his fellow students and so allowed to be here. That doesn’t mean Dorian has to like it, not when they’re taking up three tables and half the books in the French Lit section. Books Dorian will have to re-shelve once the children are done playing.

The whole group of them are revolving around a guy with curly blond hair and a shy smile that Dorian bets is carefully calculated to make women melt, because no one could possibly be that clueless about their own appearance. Because the guy is hot, and he has to know it, and Dorian hates him a little more for the act, an act Dorian is definitely not falling for. He’s been down that road with beautiful charming assholes before, and the fact that this particular asshole has rather nice shoulders doesn’t change anything.

Though they are very nice shoulders-–broad and muscled, straining the t-shirt across them–-and the smile is-

No. The smile is not, the shoulders are not, and the guy is not.

And then the pizza arrives, and that’s more than Dorian can stand. Maybe if he hadn’t forgotten his own lunch, he wouldn’t have minded quite so much, but he hasn’t eaten in ten hours, and he’s got three more to go before he can go home to eat Ramen in his tiny apartment. The smell of pizza is just cruel and unusual punishment.

The books. Dorian is thinking of the books, of course, and what all those greasy fingers will do to the pages. It has nothing at all to do with forgetting his lunch, or being stood up for last night’s blind date (and why did he let Felix talk him into that in the first place?), or this morning’s patronizing voicemail from his father that reminded him he wouldn’t have to eat Ramen if he would just sell his soul to his parents’ idea of who he should be.

None of that has any bearing on anything. He’s simply thinking of the potential damage to the college’s property, that’s all.

He sits behind the desk for a moment, seething quietly and marshaling an array of scathing comments as he tries not to think about how fucking good that pizza smells. How long has it been since he last had pizza? Or anything that didn’t come out of the discount bin at the grocery store. All of which only makes him angrier.

Ready for battle, he pushes his chair back and gets to his feet. The motion attracts some attention–-possibly because he stood so abruptly that his chair bounced off the wall behind him–-and the not-at-all-cute guy looks up at him, a piece of pizza stopping halfway to his mouth. When he meets Dorian’s eyes, he smiles that same shy smile and holds out the slice of pizza in clear invitation.

That smile absolutely does not make Dorian’s heart beat a little faster. No, no, and no. His heart is pounding because he’s pissed, because these idiots are ruining his books and leaving a mess that he’ll have to clean up. He is absolutely not entertaining any fantasies about what someone with shoulders like that could do.

Now he’s as angry at himself as he is at them, and it’s all he can do not to stomp as he crosses the library to them. The blond’s expression has changed into something a little more abashed than charming, and Dorian absolutely does not find it cute. Nor does he have any desire to do something to bring back the smile.

He has his mouth open on a cutting rebuke, designed to chase them out of his space before he’s reduced to begging them to give him just a couple crusts, but the blond gets there first, blurting out, “Did you want some?”

And then he blushes, which is so startling Dorian forgets what he was about to say. By the teasing the blush provokes, this isn’t an uncommon occurrence.

Trying to gather his thoughts back together, Dorian glances around the table and begins to notice a couple things he might possibly have missed earlier. The first is that the pizza and the books are definitely not getting acquainted: the boxes are banished to a table by themselves, and there are no greasy fingerprints smeared everywhere. The second is that they do actually appear to be reading the books in front of them, and taking copious notes, except for the would-be-jokers still busy teasing their friend. One of the other players is hunched over a book that’s actually in French, and he appears to be reading it almost as fast as Dorian could.

None of which helps him collect his thoughts, not when everything is deviating wildly from the expected script.

“You can have some, if you want,” the blond says, and when Dorian looks at him, he smiles anxiously.

Dorian’s heart absolutely does not flutter. Because straight boys–-straight _jocks_ –-are so not his thing. He may not be great at picking boyfriends, but at least he’s managed to avoid that particular idiocy. A trend he firmly intends to continue today, thanks all the same.

Still...pizza.

“We’ve got extra,” the guy offers. His friends protest this loudly and are hushed with a confident grin that turns shy again as soon as it’s turned back in Dorian’s direction. “I mean, yeah, they’ll eat it all if it’s there, but that doesn’t mean they’ll starve if you grab some.”

Which is how Dorian finds himself back at his desk with a paper plate and three slices of pizza. He’d tried to stick to one, but they’d opened the boxes and he’d frozen in indecision until someone had just handed him a plate with one of each.

He eats slowly, savoring every bite of cheese and greasy dough and mystery meat. It probably says something about his life that this is the highlight of his week, but he doesn’t care right now.

He looks over at the mob of them a couple times, more out of habit than anything, and he catches the blond looking back more than once. Every time their eyes meet, the guy looks away and blushes, and Dorian begins to suspect he might not be as straight as he appeared at first. Straight or closeted, Dorian’s not interested in playing that game, but that doesn’t mean he can’t admire the view.

An hour or so later, he comes back from re-shelving a couple books to find the group of guys packing up. They’re even putting their books away and the pizza boxes have disappeared, so that by the time they hit the library doors, there’s no sign they were ever there in the first place.

Out of habit, Dorian goes over to check the shelves, but unlike a surprising number of people, they can both count and alphabetize: the books are all back where they belong. He’s still contemplating that when someone behind him says, “Hey, can I borrow your phone?”

“What?” Dorian asks, turning to find one of the football players has come back. Not the blond, unfortunately. Or perhaps fortunately, since Dorian really isn’t in the mood to make a fool of himself tonight.

“Can I borrow your phone?” the guy asks again.

He’s grinning a little too broadly for Dorian’s comfort: everything about him screams that he’s making some kind of trouble, and Dorian really doesn’t want to be in the middle of it.

“I don’t have it on me,” Dorian lies.

The guy rolls his eyes–-possibly because he can see Dorian’s phone sticking out of his front pocket–-and says, “Okay, you got something I can write on?”

“Probably,” Dorian says warily.

Back at the front desk, he digs up a piece of scrap paper and a mostly-functional pen. The guy has to go over a couple of the lines twice, but eventually he finishes and hands both paper and pen back to Dorian with another evil grin. “Thanks!”

Before Dorian can answer, he’s gone, jogging after his friends without a backward glance. Lacking any other clues, Dorian looks down at the paper to find a name and number scrawled across it, along with a passable sketch of the blond staring dreamily into space.

The picture is captioned, “Too chickenshit to ask for your number,” with a helpful arrow pointing at the sketch, “but call him anyway.”

Dorian blinks at it for a while, then grins and pulls out his phone.

**Author's Note:**

> [on Tumblr](https://dragonflies-and-katydids.tumblr.com/post/134436090172/library-aus-based-off-my-experiences-working-in-a)


End file.
